Gray Watson Personal Thoughts 2003.12.02
The Death of Columbia

I've just finished reading an amazing article about the shuttle Columbia accident written by William Langewiesche for the
Atlantic Monthly. Amazing and extremely sad. I would encourage you
all to take the time to read it. Right now. If they want to charge
for the story, consider spending the money. You won't be
disappointed.

The article talks with a lot of detail about the shuttle, the
accident, and the investigation. Langewiesche interviewed extensively
Hal Gehman who lead the investigation. Sounds like an extremely
capable man and the right guy for the job. The management and
communication problems inside NASA sound exactly like those in place
with earlier disasters. What a shame.

I'll lead with a quote from the piece about the test firing of a
piece of foam at a spare leading edge piece in an attempt to simulate
what happened when some insulation broke off the external fuel tank
and hit the shuttle during launch. Among the engineers watching the
test were many from NASA who were still refusing to believe that the
foam could have done any damage.

The gun fired, and the foam hit the panel at a 25-degree relative
angle at about 500 mph. Immediately afterward an audible gasp went
through the crowd. The foam had knocked a hole in the RCC large enough
to allow people to put their heads through. Hubbard told me that some
of the NASA people were close to tears. Gehman had stayed away in
order to avoid the appearance of gloating. He could not keep the
satisfaction out of his voice, however, when later he said to me,
"Their whole house of cards came falling down."

My Thoughts

I am someone who has until recently taken the reality and
necessity of manned space travel as a given. We must try to get out
there -- push at the limits our little ecosphere here. Maybe I'm
worried that the damage to our planet will be too great at some point
that we will have to move elsewhere. Maybe I see our population
growth problems translating into the need for yet more land and
resources lest we make the movie Soylent Green
prophetic. Maybe, as Asimov theorized, if we do not push out into the
stars to colonize early, some other species will do so first, their
"No Trespassing" signs restricting human exploration.

Probably the biggest reason that I support manned space
exploration is that I want to do it. It's a feeling made up of the
science fiction books and movies, wild west flicks, and amusement park
rides. Americans are a crazy independent bunch -- maybe we all are --
and the dream (yes, not the specifics) of space travel are
intoxicating. I can see working for some space launch company in a
future incarnation, if only it isn't in Texas or Florida.

I guess recently I've come to the conclusion that although we
should be doing research on manned space exploration, the shuttle and
even the International Space Station are mostly a waste of effort and
money. I followed the Deep Space 1 project with it's low cost and
innovative technology and watch the news for commercial launch company
viability. The shuttle is the most complex system every flown. This
said, they have to go on Ebay to buy 8086 processors to run their
systems. I believe strongly that the money spent on the shuttle
program could have produced other technologies by this point. Single
stage truly reusable craft with less complex and more off-the-shelf
technology.

Although we should still do research on manned space travel, the
science being performed currently in space is crap. What exactly has
come from it? People point at communication satellites and even
integrated circuits as byproducts of the space industry but it is not
any work done in space which has resulted in these advances. Rather
the innovation which has come from past development of launch vehicles
is the force that has pushed the envelope before handing off the
technologies to market forces. Our research dollars will be much
better spent if we took the NASA millions and spent it on space
innovation while leaving the space research to unmanned missions until
the costs of human launch vehicles gets a lot less -- maybe by two
orders of magnitude.

Maybe we'll have to wait for the space elevators to be a reality
before man should again be in space to any significant degree. Maybe
the Russians with their space tourism have got it right and if people
want to pay for it and can afford it then people will go. I can see
paying at least $10k for a trip into space -- maybe even $100k. If
market forces drove manned space exploration, then the market would
correct it.

I was in my room working on my Macintosh in 1986 when my brother
called out from the living room to come in and watch the shuttle
Challenger explode -- "roger, go to throttle-up". I was shocked and
dismayed and felt the surreal quality of the event and now I'm not
sure why. These were men and women who knew the risks. They were
riding an enormous bomb into space and I'm sure their wills were in
order. I don't mean to belittle the event but I think we must put it
in its proper perspective. 7 people died that day doing something
incredibly dangerous -- but it wasn't a senseless death. It shouldn't
have been a surprise or shock. It was certainly unfortunate but it
should be seen as a necessary byproduct of working with the "risk
versus risk" scenarios.

I think it is more interesting to figure out why I/we treated the
Challenger disaster with such reverence. What is it about space
travel which has us looking and talking about 7 lives while innocent
people die on street corners every day in senseless, hopeless,
terrible ways? Maybe the human psyche yearns for space travel to be a
reality. Maybe we see it as one of the last great frontiers and our
endeavors to push the envelope in this area are supremely noble.
Maybe these are the reasons why we weren't told until must later that
the Challenger crew most likely survived the explosion and died when
the cabin slammed into the ocean minutes later.

So I have no idea where I was when I heard about Columbia breaking
up. Maybe Challenger cured us of future moments of shuttle loss.
Maybe 9/11 overwhelms all tragedy. Maybe my cynicism has changed my
view of space disasters. I think it is a good thing when space
accidents become as mundane as other transportation accidents -- when
the safety organizations mobilize to the crash site, determine what
went wrong, but the flights continue in the meantime. It will
certainly be a better thing when true competition and market forces,
with standard government oversight, push the envelope more than NASA
dollars.

Unfortunately, I am pessimistic that I will see this in my
lifetime.

Interesting Facts

Here some interesting facts about the shuttle that I didn't know
or found particularly interesting.

The shuttle accelerates fast enough to clear the launch tower
doing about 100 mph, though it is so large that seen from the outside,
it appears to be climbing slowly.

90% of the shuttle's weight sitting on the launch pad is fuel.

During launch it climbs to ~350,000 feet and then goes into a
shallow dive to pick up speed, still at full throttle. It gains 1000
mph every 20 seconds until it reaches ~15,000mph when it again climbs
until it reaches 17,500 mph which is orbital velocity.